Starting in the 1990s and despite explicit promises to the contrary made to Russia's Gorbachev and Yeltsin, US President Clinton started the expansion of NATO with the three countries of Central Europe — Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic. Then George W. Bush Jr. added seven more countries — Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the three Baltic states — but right up against Russia. And then the coup de grâce: Ukraine and Georgia in 2008 and Sweden and Finland in 2020. The explicit goal was to surround Russia. (It’s the same playbook as Palmerston in 1853 to 1856 in the first Crimean War: surround Russia in the Black Sea, cut off its ability to have a military presence and to project any kind of influence into the eastern Mediterranean.) As a complement within the stance of "benevolent global hegemony." (Project For The New American Century, PNAC, 1997) the Neo-Cons were already contemplating lots of wars in order to take out the former Soviet-allied countries — wars to overthrow Saddam (Iraq), wars to overthrow Assad (Syria), wars to overthrow Gaddafi (Libya). Those were all rolled out in the next 20 years.